
Class. 
Book. 



THE CLAIMS OF GOD TO RECOGNITION 



ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 



.A. SERMON 

PREACHED ON THE DAY OF NATIONAL HUMILIATION 
AND PRAYER, 



CHANCEFORD PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 

LOWER CHANCEFORD, YORK CO., PA., 
AND IN THE 

PROSPECT METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 

FAWN, YORK CO., PA. 



THE REV. JOHN FARQUHAR, 

PASTOR OP THE FORMER CHURCH. 



LANCASTER, PA.: 

PEARSOL & GEI6T, PRINTERS, DAILY EXPRESS OFFICE. 
1865. 



THE CLAIMS OF GOD TO RECOGNITION 



IN THE 



ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT LLNCIOLN 



PREACHED ON THE DAY OF NATIONAL HUMILIATION- 
AND PRAYER, 

IN THE 

CHANCEFORD PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 

LOWER CHANCEFORD, YORK CO., PA., 
AND IN THE 

PROSPECT METHODIST EPISCOPAL [CHURCH, 

FAWN, YORK CO., 'PA. 



THE REV. JOHN FARQUHAR, 

PASTOR OP THE FORMER CHTTRCH. 



LANCASTER, PA.. 

I'EAKSOL & GEIST, TRINTERS, DAILY EXPRES lb 
1865. 



V5H 



Lower Chanceford, June 5, 1865. 
Rev. John Farquhae — Dear Sir: In accordance with a resolution adopted 
unanimously by many citizens assembled on the evening of June 1st, 1865, 
the undersigned solicit for publication a copy of the discourse delivered 
by you in Chanceford Church, on the morning of that day. 
Yours truly, 

JOHN BAIR, 
ROBERT SMITH, 
JOSEPH MANIFOLD, 
STEPHEN McKINLEY, 
, SAMUEL M. PEDAN, 

JOSEPH PEIRCE, 
HARRY KEYSER, 
WILLIAM G. ROSS. 
JAS. B. AMOS, 
JAMES S. FULTON. 
JOHN SMITH. 

Rey. Jons Faequhar — Dear Sir : In behalf of many citizens of Fawn 
and Hopewell, the undersigned beg leave to join in the above request, hav- 
ing heard the same discourse repeated in the afternoon of the day of Na- 
tional Humiliation, in Prospect Methodist Church. 
Yery truly yours, 

DAVID WILSON, 
SALEM MANIFOLD, 
WILLIAM LIGGET, 
WILLIAM WALLACE. 



Chanceford Manse, Lower Chanceford. 
Gentlemen: I submit the sermon with some slight alterations, which you 
may readily discover, but which do not materially affect it, to be disposed 
of as you solicit. 

Yours respectfully, 

JOHN FARQUHAR. 
To Messrs, John Bair, Robert Smith. Joseph Manifold. David Wilson. 
Salem Manifold, &c. 



THE CLAIMS OF GOD TO RECOGNITION IN THE 
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 



Be still, and know that I am God. — Psalm xlvi: 10. 

The general belief of commentators is that this Psalm refers 
to the deliverance of Judah from the hand of Sennecharib the 
Assyrian, by the miraculous destruction of the army of that 
powerful and ^boastful heathen king. Though the exhorta- 
tion of the text may have here a limited import, the limit ari- 
ses not so much from its nature as the circumstances in which 
it is given. In its own character it is general. In either joy- 
ful or sorrowful events, prosperous or adverse circumstances, 
the voice of the Lord may be heard, ever saying, "Be still, 
and know that I am God." Both in joy and sorrow men are 
apt to forget their Maker, and as a consequence to give expres- 
sion to their feelings without due reference to him whose over- 
ruling providence has ordered the events over which they re- 
joice or grieve. Thus exultation or depression, with their res- 
pective manifestations, may be sinful : and the very danger 
that they may become so, justifies the imperative counsel in 
the text. Be still — still your undue and Godless feelings — 
cease from them — leave them off so far as they ignore the 
hand of the Lord or render you forgetful of bis wisdom, and 
unmindful of his providentially indicated purposes. The 
duty is, not to cease from either joy or grief, or their mani- 
festations, but from those phases of either which shut out the 
sovereign ruler ; and to learn the lessons of his Supreme.God- 
head — his uncontrolled direction of the affairs of men. 

We have assembled this day under circumstances which 
render the consideration of the text peculiarly appropriate. 



(4) 

He who was the chief magistrate of our nation, was but a few 
weeks ago most foully murdered in the incumbency of his 
office ; and his successor, in view of the fact that " our Coun- 
try has become one great house of mourning, where the head 
of the family has been taken away ; and believing that a 
special period should be assigned for again humbling our- 
selves before Almighty God, in order that the bereavement 
may be sanctified to the nation ;" and " in order to mitigate 
that grief on earth which can only be assuaged by commu- 
nion with the Father in Heaven," has appointed this day " to 
be observed wherever in the United States the flag of the coun- 
try may be respected, as a day of humiliation and mourn- 
ing," and has recommended his "fellow citizens to assemble 
in their respective places of worship, there to unite in solemn 
service to Almighty God, in memory of the good man who 
has been removed, so that all shall be occupied at the same 
time in contemplation of his virtues, and sorrow for his sud- 
den and violent end." 

I can think of no text, the consideration of which will 
come more fully up to the design of this recommendation, 
than the one I have chosen. 

I. Let us look at the circumstances which give direc- 
tion AND WEIGHT TO THE ADMONITION OF THE TEXT AS AP- 
PLIED TO US. 

The general circumstances are the murder of the President 
of the United States, and the feelings thereby engendered. 
The murder of a chief magistrate of a nation has been no un- 
common event in the history of the world, though heretofore 
unknown in our annals. Emperors, Kings and Chiefs have 
often fallen victims to private animosity, ambitious rivalry, 
vile treason, and mistaken patriotism. Sacred and profane 
history abound in instances. But, in all the list, I can think 
of only two which approach in their circumstances or atro- 
city that of Abraham Lincoln. In the latter part of the six- 
teenth century, the people of the ^Netherlands — a protestant 
people — threw off the yoke of a persecuting papist, Philip of 



( 5 ) 

Spain, and bravely fought for their liberty. Philip offered a 
reward for the life of their leader, William, Prince of Orange, 
called the Silent ; and urged on by fanaticism and the hope 
of reward, a wretch named Balthazar Gerard murdered the 
Prince in the year A. D. 1584. The other instance is that of 
Henry IV., King of France. Henry had been King of Na- 
varre, and head of the protestant faction in the civil wars of 
France. Though rightful heir to the French throne after 
Henry III., the Catholic League refused to recognize him on 
the death of that monarch. After much fighting he reconciled 
the opposing party by turning Ronjan Catholic. Though this 
step is a blot on his fair fame, he nevertheless soon won all 
hearts but those of the most fanatical, by the generosity and 
gentleness of his reign. After escaping many conspiracies and 
attempts to murder him, he fell at last, in the year A. D. 1609, 
by the hand of one Ravaillac, a blood-thirsty bigot, who, when 
the King's carriage was temporarily obstructed in a narrow 
street, mounted the wheel, and stabbed him in the heart 
with a knife, over the shoulder of one of his courtiers, and 
in the midst of six others. The assassin, thinking he had 
committed a commendable act, as he regarded the King as 
still a heretic in heart, made no attempt to escape,'and seemed 
surprised that any one should detest his horrid crime. These 
two murders, although they came nearest in horror to that of 
our President, do not by any means fill up the measure of 
atrocity attained by it. And while to the names of Gerard 
and Ravaillac another will be added in the execrations of all 
history, that of J. Wilkes Booth will stand most conspicuous 
in the roll of infamy. But we look at the circumstances of 
this crime not to increase our hatred of the poor wretch who 
has already passed into the hands of Him to whom vengeance 
belongeth, but to prepare us the better for the lessons of the 
Lord. Let us look at some of the circumstances in detail, 
yet briefly. 

First: The murder we mourn is that of one occupying the 
most exalted earthly position— the Chief Magistrate of a 



( 6 ) 

nation. I need not before this audience attempt to prove 
that " the powers that be are ordained of God" — that lawful 
magistrates are "God's ministers," appointed for the promo- 
tion of good and the suppression of evil : you all know it. In 
all history the murder of the Chief of State has been looked 
upon as the vilest of crimes. Whether he be King or Presi- 
dent, occupying his seat for life by hereditary descent and 
the silent acquiescense of the people, or only for a time and 
by their expressed choice, he is, while he rules, " the Lord's 
anointed;" he is in a certain sense the father of the nation, 
and his murder is parricide. David expressed the general 
horror of the crime when he said to the man that boasted of 
having slain Saul, " How wast thou not afraid to stretch forth 
thine hand to destroy the Lord's anointed ?" and when he 
put him to death, saying, "thy blood be upon thy head: for 
thy mouth hath testified against thee, saying, I have slain the 
Lord's anointed." — 2 Sam. i: 14-16. Men have often, in our 
own land especially, attempted to separate the office from the 
man. Whether they have ever been successful, and if so, 
whether to any beneficiarpurpose, may be questions. In this 
case no such effort can be successfully made. It was not sim- 
ply Abraham Lincoln that was slain; it was the President of 
the United States. No pretense of private wrong was set up ; 
it was his official position and acts that were obnoxious to the 
conspirators. This opposition was not the mere party disap- 
proval that results from a legitimate difference of opinion, but 
traitorous sympathy with armed insurrection and treasonable 
effort to stab the Nation in a vital part, that a vile rebellion, 
in its desperate fortunes, might be revived, or else in its dying 
agonies, revenged. And yet no one can doubt that though 
no private wrong was avowed, there was the most intense per- 
sonal ill-will and malice ; and that the deadly purpose of 
avenging fancied public wrongs, derived fixedness and inten- 
sity by the transmutation of criminal political animosity into 
the most causeless private hatred. This deed was then both 
treason and murder, both in intent and fact. 



( 7 ) 

It adds to the enormity of the crime that the victim was 
the Chief Magistrate of the Nation, hy its free choice, selected 
by such an overwhelming majority as set at rest every ques- 
tion of fairness, and secured the ready acquiescence of the can- 
did, patriotic and intelligent portion of his political oppo- 
nents. If the slaying of a hereditary ruler, or the choice of 
an aristocracy, is looked upon as an atrocious crime, what 
shall we say of such an end of such a man as we mourn ? 
Humanly speaking, our Nation is the hope of the world. She 
as far transcends in dignity and prospective usefulness the 
other nations of the earth, as do the mighty principles of 
civil and religious liberty embodied in her constitution ami 
practice, the dogmas and customs of which other nationali- 
ties boast. This man then filled the most exalted position : 
not merely in the sense of being a ruler, and because rul- 
ing is that position, but in the higher and more exclusive 
sense of being the highest ruler of the first of nations. By 
so great then as was his exaltation, by so much the more 
deep, and black, and hellish, was his taking away; and by so 
much the more is our horror and indignation increased. 

Second : This murder is that of a man of exalted deeds. 
Every effort by which he rose from his original obscurity to 
his final eminence was of this description. Some men at- 
tain high position by crawling: on the belly they squirm 
through sloughs and creep over rocks which honest men 
who prefer to walk erect as God made them, find difficult to 
overcome, or with their measure of talents impossible. Not 
so with Lincoln.' His public career from the lowest station 
to the highest, was singularly pure. It challenges investiga- 
tion. To him as rightfully as to any man in all the land, 
was applied by his admiring countrymen the term, honest. 
But this exaltation of deed was seen not only in the steps 
by which he rose, but also in his noble advocacy of right, 
and his utterance of immortal principles, even when to advo- 
cate right and utter such principles were far from being 
sure means of rising. His was the nature that disregarding 



( ? ) 

present consequences to himself, ever trusted in the final tri- 
umph of justice, and bent all its energies to its success. These 
same traits accompanied him into the chair of state, and 
rendered his deeds there the most famous and widely honor- 
ed of the age. Neither William of Orange nor Henry of 
Bourbon, skilful generals and wise statesmen as they were, 
equal him here. Intelligent Europe with almost one voice, at 
length concedes the glory of his acts ; the majority of his 
countrymen welcome the tribute from the old world as a con- 
firmation of their own estimate; nor will the rest of his fel- 
low citizens be long in joining the general judgment and 
making it all but universal. 

To our army and navy we can never be too grateful for 
their heroic deeds — their sufferings and their triumphs ; but 
more than even to them are we indebted to the brain that toil- 
ed, and planned, to the constancy that bore us up and in- 
spired us with courage and hope in the hour of disaster, to 
the moderation that respected the laws and the rights of the 
people in the midst of unparalleled provocation, faction and 
sedition, to the patience and skill that bore with and cor- 
rected mistakes in subordinates, and to the wisdom that di- 
vested victory of its most potent dangers. It was Lincoln 
more than any other man, who, under God, subdued the re- 
bellion and saved his country. And this is not all ; more 
than any other man he has purified and exalted his coun- 
try. The example of so pure a magistrate will not be lost 
on future occupants of office, nor on the people when they 
select men to administer the laws. In one respect his puri- 
fying influence is most conspicuous; and the world will nev- 
er let its memory die. To efface the foulest blot upon our 
nation — slavery ; to wipe out which has cost more thought 
among good men, given rise to more diversity of sentiment, 
and been the cause of more heart-burnings, jealousies, en- 
mities, than any other public question, his practical ge- 
nius seized upon a plan of pre-eminent wisdom. While the 
main design was to break the back of the rebellion and pre- 



( 9 ) 

vent the like from ever again cursing the nation, in its own 
nature it opened up a course from which when entered on 
there could be no receding. I know that many of us doubt- 
ed at first, I know that many, though in diminished num- 
bers, doubt now ; I know that some honestly doubt the wis- 
dom of the plan. But I know also that in the opinion of 
the vast majority of the enlightened and christian world, it 
is the greatest, the most glorious'feature of his administration. 
And I am convinced that however we may differ now as to 
the policy of this scheme, judging its policy by immediate 
consequences; when sufficient time has elapsed to efface 
from our memories the differences to which it has given 
rise ; and when the remoter steps which it necessitates, and 
the maturer plans for which it has prepared the way, rise up 
in their acknowledged wisdom ; and when the ultimate re- 
sults are seen in their beauty and glory ; — that then we shall 
all acknowledge as exalted the deed of him, who, disregard- 
ing the fanaticism of pro-slavery conservatism on the one hand, 
and the fanaticism of ultra-abolitionism on the other, issued 
on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one 
thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, the Emancipation 
Proclamation. 

I feel assured that we will yet all rejoice in the even now 
largely conceded honor, that our country has produced the 
most remarkable man of our times — that as Germany gave 
to the world, in Luther, the great man of the sixteenth, 
England, in Cromwell, the great man of the seventeenth, 
the new-born America, in Washington, the great man of the 
eighteenth, so redemedand regenerated America has given, in 
Lincoln, so far at least, the great man of the nineteenth 
century. That such a man as this should be cut off from 
his exalted career by a vile assassin ; that he should, by such 
a mean and murderous act, be deprived of the rest and enjoy- 
ment so fairly won by his toil and faithfulness — "Be still, and 
know that I am God."' 

Third : This murder was that of a man of exalted 



( io ) 

worth. As was his course, so was his character — pure. That 
he was a sinner in the sight of God, as are all men, is true. That 
he was a sinner saved by grace — a christian, we have strong 
reasons for believing. But putting that question aside, as one 
which God only can settle, we look at his life — his acts and 
words — and find a clear testimony to the wonderful combi- 
nations of his character. A man is presented, light-hearted 
and cheerful, yet of deep and earnest thought and correct 
morals, patient, persevering, energetic, gentle, kind-hearted to 
a proverb, yielding in matters of expediency, yet firm as a rock 
in what he deemed the right, ever dependent on God and 
ever appealing to him for wisdom and aid. Those who were 
brought in contact with him in the administration of public 
affairs, can bear testimony to his remarkable quickness and 
clearness of apprehension, to the masculine grasp with which 
he seized and held important principles, and to the wisdom 
with which he weighed and sifted proposed plans before he 
adopted them. The world is compelled from his public doc- 
uments to allow that he possessed a wonderful mastery of sub- 
ject and an unusual faculty of making his opinions plain to 
the most ordinary intellect. With little rhetoric or fine writ- 
ing in his productions, there was a lucidness of thought and 
clearness of expression for which you may search in vain the 
works of many-authors and orators of world-wide fame. 
But his chief praise were his exalted deeds and exalted mo- 
ral worth. It is impossible not to see the soul of the man 
breathing through the closing paragraph of his last Inaugural 
address. The words will live as long as time. " With ma- 
lice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the 
right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to fin- 
ish the work we are in, to bind up the nations wounds, to 
care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow 
and his orphans ; to do all which may achieve and cherish 
a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." 
Words like these might win any heart but that of a traitor 
and assassin. 



( 11 ) 

" Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare, 
Gentle and merciful and just ! 
Who in the fear of God didst bear 
The sword of power, a nation's trust ! 

"In sorrow by thy bier we stand, 
Amid the awe that hushes all, 
And speak the anguish of a land 
That shook with horror at thy fall. 

1 ' Thy task is done ; the bond are free ! 
We bear thee to an honored grave, 
Whose proudest monument shall be 
The broken fetters of the slave. 

"Pure was thy life ; its bloody close 

Hath placed thee with the sons of light, 
Among the noble host of those 
Who perished in the cause of right." 

BryanVs Hymn. 

Fourth : The victim of this murder was a man held in ex- 
alted esteem and. love. When he first entered on the discharge 
of his high duties, he had but a slight personal hold on the 
affections of his countrymen. He very soon, however, began 
to gain the esteem and love of his political friends and the re- 
spect of many of his political opponents. This advance was the 
more valuable, because there were mingled with the oppo- 
sition of many the most bitter and violent personal attacks. 
Ridicule and abuse the most unmeasured were heaped upon 
his head. And as at home so abroad. The organs of public 
opinion in Europe, especially in Great Britain and France, 
with a few honorable exceptions, were unsparing and out- 
rageous in their attacks. Some of this continued to the 
end, but to the honor of humanity be it spoken, much 
was gradually softened down and mnch abandoned; so 
that at the time of his death no ruler was so generally 
respected throughout the civilized world ; and never 
one in our own land more dearly loved, and never one loved 
by so many hearts. The testimonials of Foreign Govern- 
ments, the resolutions of public bodies, and the editorials of 
foreign papers show the high honor in which he was held in 
other lands ; and exhibit how his noble life had overcome 
the most bitter prejudices, and turned derision, scorn and ha- 



( 12 ) 

tred, into esteem, admiration and love. No paper was more 
scurrilous than the London, Punch with both pen and pencil. 
Now listen to its candid confession of error and to its noble 
tribute to despised worth. After alluding to its own ridicule 
of his personal appearance and of the difficulties of his posi- 
tion, it proceeds : 

" Beside this corpse, that hears for winding sheet 
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew, 
Between the mourners at his head and feet, 
Say, scurril jester, is there room for you ? 

" Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer, 
To lame my pencil and confute my pen — 
To make me own this kind of prince's peer, 
This rail-splitter, a true born king of men. 

" My shallow judgment I had learned to rue, 
Noting how to occasion's height he rose, 
How his quaint wit made home truth seem more true, 
How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows. 

" How humble, yet how hopeful he could be ; 
How in good fortune and in ill the same ; 
Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, 
Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. 

* ' He went about his work — such work as few 
Ever had laid on head and heart and hand — 
As one who knows where there's a task to do, 
Man's honest will must heaven's good grace command. 

"Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, 
That God makes instruments to do his will, 
If but that will we can arrive to know, 
Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill. 

" So he went forth to battle on the side 

That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, 
As in his peasant boyhood he had plie 1 

His warfare with A rude nature's thwarting mights. 
* * # * -::• •::- * 

*' So he grew up a destined work to do, 

And lived to do it : four long-suffering years' 
Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through, 
And then he heard the hisses changed to cheers, 

"The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, 

And took both with the same unwavering mood ; 
'Till, as he came on light, from darkling days, 
And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood, 

"A felon hand, between the goal and him, 

Reached from behind his back, a trigger prcst — 



( 13 ) 

And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, 
Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid at rest. 

" Tbe words of mercy were upon his lips, 
Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, 
When this vile murderer brought a swift eclipse 
To thoughts of peace on earth, good will to men. 

"The Old World and the New, from sea to sea, 
Utter one voice of sympathy and shame ! 
Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high ; 
Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came. 

"A deed accurst ! Strokes have been struck before 
By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt 
If more of horror or disgrace they bore; 
But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out. 

" Vile hand that brandest murder on a strife, 

Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven; 
And with the martyr's crown, crownest a life, 
With much to praise, little to be forgiven." 

The man who could draw such a tribute from jealous ene- 
mies, and excite in them such emotions, was no common 
man. And yet this noble man, so exalted in his position, 
deeds and worth, and in the esteem and love of others, wag 
slain by the hand of a miserable assassin, in the very pres- 
ence of his wife, and in the confidence engendered by con- 
scious rectitude and the overflowing kindliness of his large, 
loving heart. No wonder that men were at first stunned! 
No wonder that then they were filled with grief and indigna- 
tion, and doubt and dread ! No wonder that in the thronged 
thoroughfares of the cities they united as one man to express 
their deep yet overflowing feelings by speeches, resolutions, 
sermons, prayers, and by many silent tokens of mourning ! No 
wonder that in retired, rural districts, on that sad succeeding 
Sabbath — set apart by so many christians as the joyous anni- 
versary of the resurrection of the world's Redeemer, as many 
for the first time, at the house of God, heard the terrible news, 
their hearts sank within them, and their pastors were almost 
unfitted for their pulpit ministrations. 

But I now recite these circumstances simply because they 
justify the application of the text which I wish to make and 
give point to its lessons. " Be still and know that I am God." 



( 14 ) 

II. What then are the lessons conveyed in these cir- 
cumstances BY THE ADMONITION OF THE TEXT ? 

First: The admonition comes with terrible significancy to 
those ivho compassed the horrid deed, or who now approve it. 
The hand that actually perpetrated the murder now lies 
rotting in the ground, and the soul that directed the act, 
knows, as none on earth can know, that the Lord is God. 
But he had many assistants — how many God alone knoweth. 
Let every conspirator, whether still at large, or now on trial 
for his life — every one who employed the assassin, or urged 
him to his crime — every subordinate in its accomplishment, 
be still and know that the Lord is God. Let them not think 
success a criterion of divine approbation ! God for his wise 
purposes has allowed the foul deed, but only as he allows 
every other murder. Let them cease to rejoice ; and tremble 
while they remember that God wrote on tables of stone amid 
the thunderings of Sinai, " Thou shalt do no murder/' and 
•that he says, in the words of his servant, to each of them, 
" How wast thou not afraid to stretch forth thine hand to 
destroy the Lord's anointed ?" Let them learn even though 
they may have yet escaped and may continue to escape the 
just punishment of man, not to gloat over their successful 
villainy, for in the end, God will not allow them to escape 
his righteous judgment. Let not even the most reckless of 
them rejoice that whatever becomes of them, their work is 
done. They have not even this miserable consolation. It is 
true that the highest and the best has fallen, but the rest of 
their intended victims have escaped with their lives — most 
of them without the slightest harm. Nor is it in this aspect 
alone that their failure is most complete. Their ultimate 
schemes, to which these murders were to be the means, have 
failed. Let them know that God's providence has turned the 
death of their only victim to the more thorough destruction 
of the cause and friends in whose behalf they have so griev- 
ously sinned. 

Let those whose teachings led to this wicked act, be still 



( 15 ) 

and know that the Lord is God ; for to them lie has a very 
important lesson. I do not allude to those who within the 
bounds of reason and propriety opposed the measures of the 
late president's administration, from an honest conviction 
that they were not the best for securing the integrity of the 
Union and the restoration of peace. Whether they were wise 
in their opposition or not, many of them look upon this deed 
with the most profound disgust and unfeigned sorrow. But 
there are others who have no right to shelter their misera- 
ble utterances behind an allowable party opposition — who 
from ignorance or malice, by pen or tongue, heaped the foul- 
est abuse on the head that now lies low in the dust, called 
him usurper, despot, tyrant, blood-thirsty wretch, even 
branded him as one destitute of the common attributes of civil- 
ized humanity ; and who coupled with their abuse predic- 
tions of his murder, and proclaimed such a fate as his desert. 
Such teachings, working on weakly-balanced and ill-trained 
minds, produced a wide-spread demoralization as to the prop- 
er repect due to lawful authority, fostered if it did not gene- 
rate a partiality for the cause of rebellion, familiarized men 
with the idea of ridding the country by one bold stroke, of 
the man they were taught to consider its worst enemy, nour- 
ished the idea of murder, and by a logic irresistible to fanati- 
cal minds, convinced them that such murder was the highest 
service to their country and to God. A letter of the murder- 
er, given to the public after the assassination, shows how thor- 
oughly he was imbued with the spirit of such instructions; 
and the miserably prostituted use of a noble motto, "sic sem- 
per tyrannis" revealed to what preverted motives his crime 
could be traced. Let those then who directly or indirectly 
made use of such counsels, consciously and with a desire to 
produce a state of public feeling from which the crime might 
perchance spring, "be still and know that the Lord is God." 
Let them cease alike their secret rejoicings and their hypo- 
critical wailings, and know that God will hold them, even 
them, guilty of this martyr's blood unless they repent and 



( 16 ) 

bring forth fruits meet for repentance. And let those who 
without such hellish motive joined in this fearful educational 
course, but who — their eyes being opened by the appalling 
consequences — now shudder at the horrible results, also learn 
to be still. Let them cease from the vituperation of those 
they oppose. Let them know that the Lord is a God who 
demands even in the conduct of partisan politics the absence 
of malice and slander, and hatred, which is itself murder; 
and the application of the principles of his holy religion. 
Happy will it be for our county if the people of every party 
read this lesson ; and over the tomb of a slandered, abused 
and murdered public servant, learn to practice the respect for 
law and lawful rulers enjoined in the Bible, and to apply to 
others the moderation, candor and common honesty, with 
which they would themselves be judged and treated. 

There is yet another class guilty of this murder, to whom 
the Lord says, "Be still, and knoiv that I am GoaP I mean 
those, who, too cowardly themselves to execute, and too in- 
significant and ignorant to give shape to public opinion, yet 
regard the deed with unfeigned approbation, and rejoice over it 
with all the joy of their contemptible and evil nature. Strange 
that in a Christian land any such could be found ! Candor 
compels us to say there are not a few. From many parts of 
the country — from some, not far off — we hear of public and 
private demonstrations of applause. The Lord says to such, 
"cease your evil jubilee, and know that I am God; learn that 
however you may be looked upon by men, I will hold you 
guilty even as the wretch whose personal act you approve ; 
cease from this your sin and repent of this your iniquity be- 
fore you are involved in its terrible punishment — cease to 
boast, for though I have, for my wise purposes, permitted 
this event, I will resent and avenge it on the guilty; yea, I 
will make it the deadliest foe of the interests you most fondly 
cherish. 

Second : The text comes ivith an arousing call to those 
irho are indifferent to the deed.. There are many men who 



( 17) 

cannot approve it — for it is murder — but whose disapproval 
seems to be more of the intellect than of the heart — whose 
indignation is not excited, nor their horror, nor their grief — 
who regard it with only speculative or selfish questions as to 
its influence on their own or public affairs ; or who not even 
interested in these considerations, turn from it as coolly as 
from any case of ordinary crime, the record of which, in their 
papers, they may read perhaps, but hardly regard — and who 
pursue the even tenor of their way as if God were not sha- 
king the heavens, and upheaving the foundations, to arrest 
the attention of men and teach them wisdom. To all such 
the Lord says, "be still, cease from your cold and heartless 
speculations, or your absorbing occupations, and know that 
I am God — that I have permitted one of the great and exalted 
of the earth, on whose life, in the estimation of men, hung 
the fate of millions, to fall by the hand of folly and wicked- 
ness ; leave off your guilty indifference, and learn the lessons 
I would teach by this event." Let such, besides learning 
that there are lessons to learn, read the lessons themselves — 
both those to which our minds have been already directed, 
and those to which attention is now invited. 

Third : To those who regret, deplore and detest the deed, 
the Lord says, "Be still, and know that I am God. These are 
the mass of the people. To all such — to the nation — are 
these lessons given : 

1. Cease your vindictiveness toward themiserable wretch- 
es luho are guilty, and know that. I am the God to whom 
vengeance belongeth. The desire to have justice executed on 
the vile causes of this our sorrow, is both natural and right. 
But there ought to mingle with this desire no feelings of vin- 
dictiveness. Hatred of the crime is demanded, but hatred 
of the criminal the laws of God expressly forbid. When 
men first hear of such a hideous deed their indignation de- 
mands to see the murderers slain; yes, even to slay them, 
without trial, red-handed in their guilt. In view of all such 
feelings the Lord says, " Be still, and knoiv that 1 am God;" 



( is ) 

by the civil magistrate, who "beareth nut the sword in vain," 
I will in due course of law vindicate its outraged majesty, 
"for he is the minster of God, a revenger to execute wrath up- 
on him that doeth evil" — Rom. 13 : 4. Or if it please me 
by more direct providential visitation to express my displeas- 
ure, let no murmur escape your lips but know that I am still 
a God who judgeth. "Shall not the judge of all the earth 
do right ?" Or if it please me that no human or direct pro- 
vidential judgment overtake many of these criminals, and 
that they ever remain unknown to me*i as participants, cease 
from every rebellious thought and know that I am a God of 
whom neither the omniscience nor omnipotence will allow 
the impenitent guilty to escape his final and eternal sentence. 
2. The Lord by this event bids the nation cease from iveak 
J and perverted views of the awful baseness and punishment 
of treason. Public sentiment — after all, the great controller 
of official action — was fast degenerating into a state alike dis- 
honoring to the great establisher of civil government, and 
dangerous, if not to the re-establishment, at least to the con- 
tinuance of the law's supremacy. Universal mercy to reb- 
els was the increasing cry. From a short-sighted view of a 
fancied advantage in policy, we were in danger of forgeting that 
treason is the highest crime against society. We were in 
danger of even offering a premium on skill, perseverance, and 
cruelty in its prosecution, by exercising a false and pernicious 
magnanimity toward those who had been its very head and 
front. It needed some shock to make the people stop and 
think whereunto they were tending, and to impress on them 
as they had never before had impressed on them even by its 
countless atrocities, the unrelenting, unscrupulous, fiendish 
character of this rebellion. How much Mr. Lincoln was in- 
fluenced by the rising cry among some of his friends I can- 
not say ; nor can I say at what point he would have restrain- 
ed his overflowing pity, and when presented with the practi- 
cal question, yielded to his sterner sense of right and justice. 
There is reason to fear that, had he drawn the sword to pun- 



( 19) 

ish, circumscribing even narrow circles as would have been 
the case in its sweep, this mawkish sentimentalism would 
have joined its clamor to the howl of defeated enmity, and 
wrought unspeakable embarrassment and mischief. The re- 
port of his death-shot should rouse the nation from this mor- 
bid condition, lead the people to examine the fundamental 
principles of government and law, and discriminate as to 
where mercy is in place, and where, inflexible justice. And 
I think I can see how the well known gentleness and com- 
passion of the martyr, have been over-ruled — shall we not 
say, were ordained ? not only to render his murder itself more 
detestable in the sight of men, but to impart to his successor 
a more determined purpose to make the treason that inspired 
it odious in the eyes of the world, by the well deserved pun- 
ishment of the leading traitors, and to secure to him in so 
doing the useful support of a healthy and invigorated public 
sentiment. 

3. Let us further " be still " — cease from our trust in man 
and from the exaltation of but an instrument in the hand 
of the Lord, into the agent absolutely indispensable to the 
accomplishment of his work. God is jealous of his honor, 
which he will not give to a creature. Gradually there had 
been growing in the country a conviction that of all men liv- 
ing the late President was the man chosen of God, and best 
fitted by experience and character to accomplish the great 
work of restoring to the nation the blessings of Union and 
peace. Circumstances had caused strong doubts — doubts, I 
think now,seen to be unwarranted — of the hands into which 
in case ol his decease, the reins of power would fall. These had 
at home and abroad added intensity to the wish and fervor 
to the prayer that Lincoln's life might be spared to the nation 
and to the world. Looking at the respective characters of 
Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, men would have 
supposed that the latter was better fitted to carry on the war 
than to close the contest and pacify the country ; and that 
the former was better suited to the work upon which he was 



(20) 

about to enter than the task he had so successfully accom- 
plished. But God sees not as we see: his thoughts are not 
as our thoughts. In his providence he gave Lincoln to a 
work which he accomplished well, but took him from one 
which many thought would have filled up the measure of his 
glory ; while he placed the power of peace in the hands 
judged by many best fitted for war — nay more, in the hands 
of the very man we doubted. Who will say that God is 
wrong? Who will even dare to regret the change? The 
assassins were permitted to work their will on the one, and 
frustrated in their desire to destroy the other. God gave to 
the one his work which he did, to the other he has given a 
work yet to do. The one did his allotted work well ; have wc 
a right to say the other will fail? In one sense Lincoln was 
necessary to the work of the future; but it was his death that 
was necessary, not his life. In the fall of the one and the 
rise of the other, God rebukes — not our love of the lost— but 
our almost idolatrous dependence on a mere agent — a crea- 
ture of his hands — a potsherd of the earth. " Be still, and 
know that I am God." 

4. Jl fourth lesson is to cease from despairing of the na- 
tion and of the, advancement and final triumph of liberal 
pi'inciples. When the news of the death of this murder reach- 
ed Europe, the organs of aristocracy predicted the wildest 
anarchy as the result. The fabric which had withstood the 
shocks of a four years' hard war, weakened by the contest, 
would, now that its head was slain, surely exhibit to all the 
world its inherent instability, in a mighty and inevitable fall. 
And even we — at least many of us — who ought to have- 
known better, in that dark hour questioned with one another, 
"What are we coming to ?" Some seemed to fear that the 
very foundations of social order were destroyed, and that eve- 
ry man's hand might soon be against his brother, and that 
rebellion in its secret ramifications, and by a new St. Bar- 
tholomew's massacre of the most eminent leaders of the na- 
tion, might even vet triumph. And not a few began toques- 



( 21 ) 

tion whether the wide-spread inculcation and acceptance ol 
such principles as had led to this barbarous result, did not 
indicate a state of society unfit for free institutions and re- 
quiring to be governed by the strong hand of despotic power. 
I cannot think that this is the lesson. When God says, "be 
still and know that I am God," he reproves such doubts. He 
tells us to cease our gloomy and evil prognostications. He 
tells our jealous and envious foreign neighbors to cease their 
ill-concealed pleasure at a national ruin, the wish for which 
is father to the thought. He bids men rise above the low and 
narrow views that first present themselves, and take in the 
whole range of his revealed designs for the elevation of the 
race, and for filling the world with nations enjoying the high- 
est good — nations free — civilly, socially, spiritually free. He 
bids them look back to the unexampled career of prosperity 
and advancement hitherto vouchsafed to this nation, and 
asks if these have been bestowed in vain ; and in view of 
them and of her glorious adherence to her noble principles 
in the time of sore trial — in view of the very trial itself, if 
she be not destined to continue the first of nations, to exert 
a wider influence, to exhibit a more ennobling example, until 
her principles and perhaps her polity adopted by every peo- 
ple, shall fill the earth ? "Be still, and know that 1 am God." 
5. Ji fifth lesson is to cease from overwhelming sorrow 
and vain regret. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught that 
it is wrong to mourn for departed friends or because of pub- 
lic and private calamities. But the whole spirit of God's 
word is against carrying our grief to the point of repining at 
the decree of the Almighty. In this dispensation men have 
no right to sorrow as those who have no hope. Even were 
we unable to see any specific good resulting from this blow, 
the thought that he who permitted it is God, holy, wise, good 
and merciful, should still our waitings when they approach 
the verge of complaint, into the humble and sanctified sorrow 
of those who acknowledge the perfection of him who applies 
the rod. This lesson is suited to those who most keenly feel 



( 22) 

the affliction — the bereaved wife and children of the dead. 
And it is applicable to us in our sympathy with them. While 
we sorrow for them, let us sorrow as those who can and who 
do at the same time, commend them to the Lord that they 
may know him as the God who is the widow's husband and 
the orphan's father. 

6. Jl sixth lesson is so to know God as to humble ourselves 
under his mighty hand. As a nation we needed this chas- 
tisement for our sins. Many sins have f6r a long time cha- 
racterised a large portion of the people — profanity, drunken- 
ness, sabbath-breaking, pride, boasting, covetousness, indiffe- 
rence to, yea positive approval of the foul sins of slavery and 
rebellion, and a general recklessness to the claims of God in 
the support of public men and measures. To all this we 
must add not only the failure to repent, but even an increase 
of these iniquities under the very chastisements of God. Cor- 
ruption and peculation, and heartless speculation on the 
very calamities of the land, have alarmingly prevailed — one 
sin but recently made itself sadly prominent — an almost de- 
lirious and Godless rejoicing over the "crowning mercies" 
for which we should have been profoundly and religiously 
thankful. That there was thankfulness, and great and hear- 
ty rejoicing before God for our victories, that was right, it 
would be sinful to deny : but in too many instances God was 
forgotten, and in far too many, instead of thanksgiving, were 
unseemly revelry and beastly drunkenness. To a land in so 
large a measure guilty in these respects, the Lord says in this 
dispensation, "Be still, and know that I am God." 

7. Last of all — for we have no time to carry our lessons 
further — God teaches us in this event the personal lesson of 
preparing for our own death. Let lis cease to confine all our 
attention to the lessons already presented. Let ns learn that 
God is the Lord, in whom we live and move and have our 
being ; that our times are in his hand ; that we will be called 
to pass through the gates of death at some time and in some 
way now to us unknown. And let us farther know that the 



(23) 

Lord is the God in whose hands arc our eternal interests, and 
that he will by no means clear guilty sinners such as we, 
but through faith in his son. Let us know him also as a God 
railing, urging us to prepare for death, judgment and eterni- 
ty ; and let us heed him ; for we know neither the day nor 
the hour when the son of man cometh. Let us then "seek 
the Lord while he may be found, and call upon him while he 
is near." Of all the lessons taught by this providence, so 
prolifio of lessons, may not this be the one least heeded ! 
" Be still, and know that 1 am God." 



S '12 



